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US Physicians’ Occupational Stress and Dissatisfaction Greatly Increased in 2021, Survey Says
Feelings of burnout significantly increased while feelings of job satisfaction markedly decreased in US physicians across nearly all specialties at the end of 2021, roughly 2 years into the COVID-19 pandemic, survey results published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings showed.
“Given the association of physicians burnout with quality of care, turnover, and reductions in work effort, these findings have profound implications for the US health care system,” Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, director, Stanford WellMD Center, chief wellness officer, Stanford Medicine, and coauthors wrote.
Whereas previous cross-sectional studies focused on frontline health care workers in virus “hot spots,” the researchers designed the present study to provide insight into changes at the “overall US health care delivery system level.”
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The study built upon previously established longitudinal evaluations of occupational burnout and physician satisfaction with “work-life integration (WLI)” conducted by the team in 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2020. Researches drew the 2021 survey sample from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile. Of the 43,299 invited to participate in the online survey, 2440 physicians participated.
Compared with the previous years’ surveys, the mean emotional exhaustion scores were 38.6% higher and mean depersonalization scores were 60.7% higher. With these scales in mind, researchers determined that 62.8% of the physicians surveyed had experienced at least 1 case of burnout, compared with 38.2% in 2022, 43.9% in 2017, 54.4% in 2014, and 45.5% in 2011.
Importantly, the large increases in scores appeared to be associated primarily with job-related stress. Mean T-scores for depression increased by only 6.1% from previous years.
“Whereas the collective results for all US physicians are striking, the results for certain subgroups and specialties are even more alarming,” the authors noted. The study found that, after adjusting for personal and professional characteristics, “the long-documented increased risk for burnout and work-life conflict in women physicians has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a finding consistent with other reports.”
Overall, “a striking increase in occupational burnout and decrease in satisfaction with WLI occurred in US physicians between 2020 and 2021,” the study authors concluded. “Timely, system-level interventions implemented by government, payers, regulatory bodies, and health care organizations are warranted.”
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